Joe's Cow: That Brand Thing Again

Peter Janecek over at Alfadog PR is thinking about brand:

I’m writing this post on my MacBook and I’m not dumb enough to think I couldn’t have done it on my Dell laptop.  But I like the feel of my Mac, the same way I like my iPod.  My Dell costs about half what I paid for my Mac, but it’s one of those “what-the-hell” decisions.  Could this be the definition of a real brand?  Something that gets you to make an irrational buying decision even though it makes no economic sense?  

Uh, yeah, pretty much.  Or let's put it this way - that became the role of brand in a glutted economy where there was too much stuff, and the differences were marginal.  Brand is a symbolic device that justifies a premium.  Or at least it used to.

Originally, brand told you what to expect from a product.  It helps to go back to origins.  Brand was the mark that Joe put on his cow to tell you that this cow was different from all other cows.  If you had a history with Joe, then you knew how he took care of his cows.  He fed them better, he looked after them, they were healthier, they lived longer.  The brand set up your expectations and was all about your history with Joe.  This will be a premium cow because Joe raised it.  Brand was a symbol but was also meaningful because Joe had worked hard to create the expectations and earn your trust.  The brand embodied all that hard work.

Corporations that talk about brand usually don't understand the word that way.  When they talk about brand, they're talking about a symbol that doesn't have any intrinsic meaning - "this is a plain vanilla laptop but if I slap a Dell nameplate on it, people will pay more for it."  The Apple product is more distinctive - a little like Joe's cow.  There might be a fact-based reason to pay more.

Corporations also aspire to brand - as in, "I need to strengthen my brand" or "I could succeed or charge more if I had a brand."  That'd be like Joe saying, "I'm not going to do anything special with this cow - it's just a cow.  But if I could design a really cool symbol and get the guys down at the smithy to hammer one out for me, and if I burn it into the cow, then I could charge eight times more..."

Brand makes sense when you think of it as an end point - the thing you create when you do all the hard work of building a better product and creating a real relationship with customers and earning their trust.  It sums up the quality and the relationship - or it should.  To paraphrase a colleague and mentor - brand is a bad goal but a good result.

To Peter's question - does brand justify irrational buying decisions?  Sure - until the money runs out.  Quality matters, until you can't afford it, then it doesn't.  At that point people forget about brand - or other brands win out.  MacBooks used to be cool but now homebuilt computers are cooler, or something along those lines.  For more, see "price elasticity of demand."  But that's a conversation for another time.

Comments

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every thing about cameroun is fake,
their independence day 01/01/1960 is never honored, yet they celebrate may 20th as national day, they say their country was colonized by germany, false, it was colonized by the french, they say southern cameroons is a part of their country, false, southern cameroons is another country who had hers own independence from UK 10/01/1961. the germans had no colonies but territories
and kamerun was made up of five diffrent
states all are independent countries today.CAMEROUN call the plescite union
as re-unification, false infact its unification, since both countries were never one in history. They call victoria LIMBE , false the right name is victoria , the citizens of this town never held a council vote to change the name of the belove town. ahijo did that by just a radio annoncement.